


Into Ruin Hurled

by moonlighten



Category: Original Work
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Extra Treat, First Kiss, Friends to Enemies, M/M, Superheroes, Supervillains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlighten/pseuds/moonlighten
Summary: The superhero Freefall is stranded on an alien planet with his ex-best friend and current archnemesis, Knight Terror.They take the opportunity to reconnect.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Superhero/Supervillain
Comments: 16
Kudos: 105
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Into Ruin Hurled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chantefable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/gifts).



Jay feels both weightless and impossibly heavy, his supine body sinking deep into the ground whilst his head floats up, up, and away to bob like an untethered helium balloon amongst the stalactites hanging down from the ceiling high above him. The long spears of rock are embedded with huge, carbuncular crystals which glitter in the flashes of electric-blue light that tear through the gloom in rhythmic pulses.

The air smells like ozone and rain hitting hot tarmac. There must be a storm outside.

Inside, Jay is not alone. There is something shifting in the dark. Something big that moves with a chitinous creaking, talons scraping against stone.

And that something is muttering to itself – unintelligible at first, but as it draws closer, recognisable words resolve themselves from the verbal white noise. English words: long strings of seemingly random numbers, repeated over and over and over again. They mean nothing to Jay, but he does know the voice: low, husky, and a little bit posh, though the vowels are clipped just a fraction too short to be properly plummy.

"Felix," he says, and the muttering, creaking, and scraping stop in an instant.

"Knight Terror," Felix corrects him sharply because, yeah, they do that now. A decade on, and Jay keeps on forgetting even when he doesn't feel like someone scooped out his brain and replaced it with a lump of cottage cheese.

Jay tries to sit up, to face him, but the dead weight of his body is too vast for him to overcome and he fails to so much as twitch his little finger.

"What have you done to me?" he asks. "I can't move."

"I injected you with a localised paralytic of my own invention," Felix says. "I needed to keep you immobile."

A sensible precaution on his part, perhaps, because there isn't a chain in existence strong enough to hold Jay, but it's still an underhanded move. Felix usually plays fairer than that.

"You finally captured me, then?" Jay says. 

Felix has been threatening to do so for years, talking a big talk about keeping him locked away from his friends and his family and the light of the sun where no-one will ever hope to find him, but Jay had always dismissed it as the typical supervillain sound and fury, signifying fuck all. They all like to speechify along the same lines before a fight, but nothing much ever comes of it.

"No," Felix says. "I…"

He moves again, creaking and skittering until he's standing at Jay's side, looming over him.

He's wearing his costume, black leather encasing him from the tips of his steel toe cap boots to the hooded crown of his head. The enormous, leathery wings that sprout from his back are partially unfurled, curling around his shoulders and falling to his knees like a cape.

For years, Jay had assumed that they must be part of his outfit, some miracle of pneumatics and metallurgy, because there was no way they could be real. Back in the day, before everything changed, Felix had hated Augmentation; insisted that anyone who went in for it was a reckless fool for letting someone tinker with their genetics on such a massive scale when there was so much potential for – and so many examples of – it going horribly, irrevocably wrong.

But then Lady Incognito shot arrows through both of Felix's wings, pinning him in place so he couldn't flip the switch on the latest iteration in his line of death-dealing, reality-bending machines that he'd set up in the middle of London, and they'd bled real blood, and Felix screamed a real, pained scream, and Jay had to let go of yet another of his long-held, misguided beliefs about the man.

Felix Harrow, erstwhile staunch opponent of genetic augmentation, had gone and turned himself into a literal fucking _Batman_. 

"What's the last thing you remember before waking up here?" Felix asks, tilting his head to look down at Jay. A burst of bright, artificial light catches the smoked plexiglass of his goggles and Jay briefly sees his own face reflected in them, unnaturally warped by the curve of the plastic.

"I was in your lair," he says.

His _Arctic_ lair, where Felix had holed himself up, Ozymandias-like, to meddle with things man wasn't meant to meddle with, far away from the prying eyes of the world. Normally, Jay and his team have no idea what goes on inside it because Felix somehow manages to ferret out and destroy any surveillance equipment they set up before it can provide them with any useful data, and, unlike most supervillains, he doesn't employ any henchmen – whose low pay and hazardous working conditions do not generally engender any great loyalty and are thus apt to cough up the details of their boss's reprehensible schemes in return for being spared from the superheroic justice they're due.

He does occasionally collaborate with other supervillains, though, supplying them with high tech gadgets, weapons, and the like, and under the influence of Diamond Bane's truth dust, Red Scorpion blurted out that Felix was working on something big, something more powerful than he'd ever built before.

So, Jay and his team stormed Felix's hideout and tore through the massed ranks of his robot guards, fighting their way down to the bowels of the building where they found a gargantuan towering and malevolent hulk of metal, twisted wires, and ominously flashing lights. Jay pulverised it with a single super-strong punch, and above the metallic screech and electric spluttering of its death throes, he dimly heard Felix shouting his name – not 'Freefall', as his own stupid rules insisted upon, but 'Jay', and he repeated it over and over again, his voice turning shrill with panic. 

Then everything went white.

"And I destroyed your death machine," Jay finishes.

"It wasn't a 'death machine'," Felix says. "It conveyed matter through time and space."

"Like a TARDIS?"

"No, nothing like a TARDIS," Felix says, his voice flat and unamused, as though he considers the comparison asinine. As though he'd never dressed up in a Dalek costume made out of plywood and egg cartons for Halloween or cobbled together a real, working (for certain values of working) sonic screwdriver out of scraps when they were kids. 

On Jay's first day at his swanky private high school, he'd felt horribly out of place and looked it even more so – a scholarship boy in his faded second-hand blazer with thinning elbows. By silent concord, all the other boys avoided him. Except for Felix.

Jay had pinned a Doctor Who badge to his rucksack to keep a small rip in the fabric closed, and at lunchtime that first day, Felix pointed it out and asked him who his favourite doctor was. The question both surprised and delighted Jay, because it had been back before the show was revived then and most kids his age had never even heard of it, never mind watched it.

They talked about The Master, and Cybermen, and Zygons all the way through lunch, and had so much left to say that Felix wanted Jay to sit next to him in the dining hall every other day that week too so they could continue their conversation. 

By the end of the second week, he invited Jay to visit his huge fucking mansion in Wilmslow, with its _staff_ , and its delicate antiques that looked as though they'd crumble into dust if you breathed on them funny, and his distant, disapproving father who sneered at Jay like he was something Felix had brought in on the sole of his shoe. But Felix kept Jay talking, kept him laughing until none of that seemed to matter anymore. He used to have the knack for making you feel at home wherever you were just by being there as well. Back then, he was one of the kindest people Jay knew. 

"We were both caught in the energy blast when it exploded," Felix says, "and it transported us here."

"And where is here exactly?" Jay asks.

"An alien planet, though not one I'm familiar with," Felix says, shrugging. "And it appears our presence here is not welcome. We were accosted by several angry local inhabitants almost immediately after we rematerialised."

"They probably wanted to drag us off and force us to fight in some sort of gladiatorial competition," Jay says sagely.

"What?" Felix asks, sounding genuinely baffled.

"I think it's, like, the rest of the galaxy's favourite form of entertainment or something," Jay says. "It's happened to me three times already. Just last month, me and the rest of the Visionary League were—"

"The Visionary League?" Felix cuts in flatly.

Jay laughs. "Yeah, I know. It's a shit name, isn't it? Sounds like a chain of opticians. But the guys wanted to rebrand after everything that went down in Paris with Van Glorious, and that's what won the vote in the end. I still think they should have gone with my suggestion: the Awesome Superhero Squad." He waits for a moment, studying the dark void of Felix's masked face. It gives nothing away, so he adds, "Because then the acronym would have been—"

"Yes, I've already worked it out on my own, thank you," Felix says. "There's no need to elaborate."

He doesn't sound even slightly amused. He used to laugh at all Jay's bad jokes, or at least laugh _because_ they were so bad, in a stunned, disbelieving way, but then Jay's often thought that there's very little left of the man he used be; that maybe he's mostly made out of wires and valves and circuit boards beneath his black suit like the rest of his creations.

As ever, he feels a pang of sorrow at the idea, a sharp hitch of pain at the base of his ribs, but it's brief enough now, after all these years and all that repetition, that it barely gives him any pause – just a short catching of his breath before he carries on.

"So, the aliens came after us and then…?"

"You stepped in between me and them and took the brunt of their attack," Felix says in a tone of wonder, as though he can scarcely believe it happened that way. 

But Jay isn't surprised to hear it – his reflexes have been honed by years of superheroing and it's instinctual for him by now to throw himself in front of any kitten, kid, or, apparently, supervillain who looks to be in harm's way.

"Okay," he says. "What happened next?"

"You managed to fight them into submission, but were grievously injured in the process," Felix says. "So I, um, I brought you here, somewhere safe and sheltered, so you can recuperate."

That was a shockingly altruistic move – compassionate in a way Felix just isn't anymore. Most supervillains would have left Jay to rot. But, then again, perhaps there is still something human left within him, after all; something frightened that didn't want to be left alone to fend entirely for itself on an unknown alien world light years away from home.

"And then you paralysed me," Jay says accusingly.

"I didn't want you moving around, exacerbating your injuries," Felix says. "They're extensive, and they don't seem to be healing." He tucks his chin in a little closer against his chest. Jay suspects he's frowning beneath his mask. "I thought your wounds would have closed by now."

"How long have we been here?" Jay asks.

"Almost a day."

"Fuck's sake, Fe— Knight Terror, I'm not Wolverine. I don't heal instantly. Give it another day or two, and I'm sure I'll be fine, just so long as I get enough rest."

"Right," Felix says, and he nods once, brisk and resolute, before dropping into a crouch at Jay's side. "I can help with that, as well."

Before Jay has chance to protest, or even really register what's happening, Felix jabs a needle into the side of his neck. 

Jay falls back into unconsciousness in an instant.

* * *

When Jay wakes again, his body feels a lighter and freer, but also a great deal sorer, too. His shoulders ache as he pushes himself up into a sitting position and the skin across his stomach pulls painfully tight.

He groans, shakes his head, and says, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Felix, sitting cross-legged only a few feet away with a small plastic tube pulsating blue light set on the floor beside him, doesn't berate him for the cliché, or remind him that they're only thirty-two and in the prime of their super-ing lives. He just stares at Jay silently, his head cocked to one side like a bird watching a writhing earthworm.

Jay doesn't know why he keeps searching for some glimmer of the old Felix shining out from that empty mask, except that maybe he is just as 'hopelessly naïve and disgustingly optimistic' as Red Scorpion had once accused him of being.

To distract himself from lingering on this fresh disappointment, Jay turns away from Felix and begins inspecting his own injuries. His green spandex supersuit is torn, singed, and tattered from navel to clavicle, but in spite of Felix's dire proclamations, the skin underneath it is healing well. Only a handful of thin scratches remain on his chest, and a single reddened, shiny patch on his flank where once there must have been a burn.

Given a few more hours, they will have disappeared completely. Nothing marks him anymore. The few scars he does have were caused when he was a child, before his powers began manifesting themselves: a jagged zigzag at the back of his right knee from the time he misjudged a vault over a barbed wire fence; a tiny pockmarked depression just above his left wrist where he accidentally stabbed himself with a pair of scissors in primary school.

A thin white line running across his right palm where he'd cut it with a paring knife he'd stolen from his parents' kitchen when he was twelve.

Inspired by some film or TV show he'd just watched, Felix had decided that they should become blood brothers to demonstrate the depths of their best friendship. It seemed like the very best sort of idea at the time, as most of Felix's ideas did, so they'd locked themselves in Jay's tiny box room, sat side by side on his bed, sliced open their palms and pressed them together. It all felt very mythic and portentous until Felix started crying because he'd cut too deep and was dripping great pools of blood all over Jay's _Star Wars_ duvet cover.

Jay fetched a spool of bandage from the bathroom and swaddled Felix's hand up like a mummy's with it, but the blood just soaked straight on through all those layers, and they'd no choice but to confess what they'd done to Jay's mum. She bundled them both in her car and rushed off to A&E, where Felix's dad met them, summoned out of a 'very important meeting', as he informed them, by Jay's mum's frantic phone call. He gave Felix a bollocking right there in the waiting room and Felix started crying all over again.

It was mortifying at the time, but the memory makes Jay smile now, remembering how solemn and self-important they'd been about performing their ill-advised ritual. He traces the shape of the scar with his thumbnail and asks, "Do you remember when—"

"No," Felix says bluntly, which is no more than Jay had expected, because Felix seems determined to pretend that they'd never even met each other before that first time they clashed as supers, with their masks, and their costumes, and their distancing pseudonyms all firmly in place.

Still, something – the drugs Felix had given him, or blood loss, or perhaps even his 'disgusting optimism' – compels Jay to say, "Well I do. I think about those days a lot. I miss you, man."

Jay's wanted to say as much for so long that it's a relief to get the words out there, even if Felix's only response is to stare at him blankly for a beat or two before returning his attention to the small electronic device cradled in his lap.

He unfastens the back of it with a tiny screwdriver, his hands uncharacteristically clumsy due to the thick, metal-clawed gloves he's wearing. He won't take them off, even though it'd make his work easier – Jay's certain of that. He hasn't revealed a single inch of his bare skin in all the time he's been Knight Terror, and the majority of the Visionary League – Jay very much included – are convinced that the rest of his body became more like a bat's when he was augmented, his nose sprouting leafed flanges and his skin, dark fur.

Nonetheless, he manages to wrestle the device open eventually and starts sifting through its complicated innards.

"What is that thing?" Jay asks, just to make conversation and not really anticipating an answer.

"A communicator," Felix indulges him anyway. "Short range at the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to modify it so that my people back on Earth can pick up the signal."

Jay doesn't doubt that he'll be able to, because Felix is _brilliant_. Always has been.

The summer before they both started uni, Felix drove them out to Saddleworth Moor in the flashy sportscar his dad bought him for his eighteenth birthday. They laid out on their backs on the scrubby grass, amongst the heather, and stared up at the stars, sharing a bottle of Frosty Jack's cider. It tasted vile, like chemical burns and nothing like anything that had even a passing acquaintance with an apple, but Jay didn't much care, because Felix's shoulder was pressed close, warm, and intimate against his, and whenever they passed the bottle between them, their hands would slip against the sweating blue plastic and their fingers brushed together in a way that made Jay's entire arm tingle.

Jay wasn't affected by alcohol all that much even then and he was practically still sober when they reached the bottom of their second bottle, but Felix was giggly, slurring his words, and clearly in no fit state to drive. Jay's powers were in their nascence, but they weren't all that far from home, so he offered to fly them both back. He needed the practice, he told Felix, for when he became a superhero.

That set Felix off ranting, as he always did, about how that would be a waste of Jay's talents; how he should use them for something more noble than vigilantism. Something that would change the world for the better. Felix had certainly intended to, back then. He might not have superpowers, but he could build just about anything, bend chemistry and biology to his will, and Jay believed with every ounce of his being that Felix would do all those great, noble, _better_ things with his own talents that he talked so passionately about.

They'd gone their separate ways after that summer: Jay to the University of Manchester, because he couldn't really afford to move out of home, and Felix to Oxford, where he'd quickly fallen in with a bad crowd. Not the sort that Jay's mum always worried about, who took too many drugs and engaged in acts of petty vandalism, but the sort that made their own ray guns and talked about world domination over pints in the student union. Jay wonders if they'd been the ones who persuaded Felix to undergo augmentation, or if what happened to his dad had been the deciding factor.

"Do you ever think about turning your powers to good rather than evil?" he asks Felix – something else he's always wanted to say to him but has never had the courage or the chance to before. They're usually too busy fighting each other; it doesn't leave much room for heart-to-hearts.

"Maybe I already am," Felix says cryptically.

He refuses to be drawn further on the subject, or any other, despite Jay's persistent attempts at engaging him in conversation. He concentrates on the communicator, working on it diligently until, several long, incredibly boring hours later, he finally pronounces it complete.

"What now?" Jay asks him.

"Now, we just have to wait," Felix says.

* * *

The next two days drag by very slowly indeed. No matter how fondly Jay reminisces about their shared childhood years, Felix resists his efforts to drag him off down memory lane alongside him. Art, politics, science, TV shows and books also fail to pique his interest to any great degree, so Jay ends up chattering mindlessly to himself most of the time, just to fill the silence.

The tedium is punctuated by regular meals of protein bars, which Felix produces from one of the Rob Liefeld-esque number of pouches attached to his crossed bandoliers and belt. Jay has never gone in for pouches himself, preferring to keep the lines of his own costume clean, but he can certainly see the benefit to them now. Aside from the protein bars, Felix is equipped with several flasks of filtered water, a full miniature toolkit, firelighters, a seemingly endless supply of the blue emergency lights, and even a pack of cards.

They play gin rummy for hours on end.

* * *

The morning of the third day is interrupted by a high-pitched whining sound that sends Felix racing to peer out of the cave mouth.

He looks up at the sky and then back at Jay. The square set of his shoulders and proud jut of his chin look distinctly triumphant.

"Our chariot awaits," he says, gesturing for Jay to follow him as he steps outside. "Shall we?"

There's a vast black chunk bitten out of the purplish-grey sky, and Jay instantly recognises the silhouette as belonging to Felix's spaceship. A few years back, he'd used it to mount an attack on the Visionary League's satellite headquarters which knocked it out of geosynchronous orbit and sent it careening giddily off into deep space. Jay had been onboard it at the time, and the sight of the vessel rouses a weak echo of the anger and vertiginous nausea he'd experienced then. He takes an involuntary step back towards the cave.

Obviously mistaking his instinctive revulsion for reticence, Felix says, "Spacecraft aren't like buses, Freefall; there won't be another along in a minute if you miss this one. I advise you to come with me."

As Jay can't fly through the vacuum of space and has no fancy interstellar communicator of his own capable of summoning the rest of the Visionary League to his aid, he has no real choice but to take Felix up on his offer. If Felix uses this as an opportunity to spirit him off to fresh captivity in his Artic fastness, then Jay will just have to restrategise and make a new plan of escape from there.

"Okay, then," Jay says, and at an answering nod of Felix's head, a bright white beam of light emerges from the base of the spaceship, engulfs them both and transports them onboard.

The interior of the ship reminds Jay strongly of Felix's lair – featureless grey doors set in featureless grey walls lining a mind-numbing succession of straight, grey corridors. Everything is dull, starkly utilitarian, and virtually silent, despite the cohort of Felix's robots that's bustling about the place industriously. They're Felix's 'people', his only company for the most part, and they're just as cold and featureless as everything else, their faces as blank as their creator's mask.

Felix leads Jay to a door indistinguishable from its neighbours port and starboard, fore and aft, and then ushers him inside to a room outfitted with a narrow bed, toilet, sink and shower alcove moulded into its walls.

"I'll leave you to get freshened up," Felix says, moving back out into the corridor. The door slides slilently closed behind him, then sounds to lock itself with a muted click.

Jay tests it anyway, just in case, but when it fails to open again at a simple push or tug, he gives in and gives up trying. The siren song lure of the shower is just too strong.

The water is wonderfully warm, washing away every last speck of dust, grime, and dried blood that has made his skin intolerably itchy over the past three days and more, and Jay stands under the spray until his fingers prune.

Afterwards, he dresses in the paper-thin white cotton jumpsuit that had thoughtfully been left folded atop the bed, and then stretches himself out, full-length and face-down, in its place. The mattress is barely thicker than the jumpsuit, but still heavenly in comparison to the hard-packed dirt floor that masqueraded as his bed in the cave.

The door glides open again, and heavy footsteps clang against the metal floor. Jay assumes it's one of the robots until a voice says, "I brought you something to eat."

It's Felix's voice - his true voice, unmuffled by his mask.

Jay hasn't heard it in over ten years, since the last time they talked as Felix and Jay. 

Five days beforehand, the Phoenix Warriors had found a secret lab beneath the London HQ of Felix's dad's company, and he'd been exposed as bonafide henchman-hiring, killer-robot-building, white-cat-stroking supervillain. The fight that ensued was massive, pulling in all the superhero teams in the UK and threatening to cut a swathe of destruction through the city. Captain Quake ended it all by snapping Felix's dad's neck, killing him instantly.

They'd already drifted apart a little by then, but Jay had still been anxious to get in touch with Felix, to offer him comfort in any way that he could.

For four days, Felix ignored all his calls, and his texts, and his emails, before finally breaking his silence with a terse message asking Jay to meet him in a park equidistant from both their houses. 'Neutral ground', he called it.

When they stood face-to-face at last, it was dropping dark and pissing it down, the rain so hard and heavy that it seeped through the seams of Jay's cheap raincoat and soaked into his T-shirt below. 

Felix didn't give Jay chance to ask him how he was, or if he could do anything to help; he just ranted and raved and screamed himself near hoarse about getting his revenge, about making people pay, and about how superheroes like Captain Quake – like Jay – were brutish thugs who needed to be held accountable for the damage they caused.

Jay tried to reason with him, to make him listen, but Felix just talked over him, his words all running together, harsh and unceasing. In desperation, Jay grabbed hold of Felix's shoulders and kissed him.

He'd wanted to do it for a long time, but despite the odd lingering looks and touches they'd shared over the course of their friendship, he'd never been quite certain enough that Felix wanted the same thing to risk trying it before 

It was an anguished, last-ditch attempt at getting through to him; the sort of thing that always seemed to work in films as the shot the arm, slap to the face shock needed to bring someone back to themselves and set everything right once more.

But they weren't in a film – they were both sopping wet, stood between a rusting climbing frame to their right and a bin overflowing with bags full of dog shit to their left, and Felix's lips were cold and unmoving beneath Jay's, tasting faintly of tears and watery snot.

If the kiss led to any type of revelation for Felix, it wasn't one that worked in Jay's favour. Felix drew back, told Jay to fuck off, and then pushed him so hard that he lost his balance and fell on his arse in the wet grass and mud. By the time he picked himself up again, Felix had disappeared, and Jay squelched despondently back home.

He told his mum he'd tripped over a cracked pavement kerb and fallen into a puddle, and she was kind enough not to question him further.

Felix's face had been bloodless with rage that night, and it's even paler now when Jay cautiously peeks up at him; almost colourless, as though his skin hasn't been exposed to sunlight in far too long. 

Contrary to all the speculation, there's nothing bat-like about his face. His eyes are the same washed-out blue that they've always been, and his nose is still straight and sharply pointed at its tip. There are lines on his forehead that weren't there before, and likely bracketing his softly curved mouth too, though it's difficult to tell for sure as he's made the unfathomable decision to cultivate a goatee.

Jay doesn't like it, and the way it obscures the strong planes of his chin and jaw.

"The beard doesn't suit you, mate," he says, because his mouth moves faster than his tact and good sense sometimes. At the worst of times. "You look like your own evil twin."

"Oh." Felix doesn't appear insulted, just perplexed, and he blinks at Jay slowly, a light blush accentuating the arc of his high cheekbones. "Well, I, um…" 

A rational response to the comment clearly eludes him, and after a moment's confused stammering he gives up on the search for one and changes tack entirely. 

"I'll just leave this here," he says, placing the tray he's carrying down on the floor beside Jay's bed. "I need to return to the bridge. We should be back home in less than twelve hours. You might notice some time dilations when we're making a warp jump, but there's no need for concern; it's perfectly normal."

With that, he leaves again, and Jay scrabbles up to sit on the edge of the bed. There are two of the horrible, gritty protein bars they'd eaten in the cave on the tray, alongside a mug of tea. Jay grabs the mug eagerly and takes an experimental sip from it. The tea is strong, milky, and sickeningly sweet. Builder's tea – the way he's always taken it, and made with just the right, excessive number of sugars, if his taste buds are any judge.

He guzzles the rest of the tea greedily, nibbles at a corner of one of the protein bars, and then lies back down on the bed, his eyelids dragging heavily.

If they encounter any time anomalies during their journey to Earth, Jay remains blissfully unaware of them, as he sleeps deep and sound until he's roused by Felix's diffident knock at the bedroom door.

He waits patiently whilst Jay yawns, stretches, and scrubs the sleep out of the corners of his eyes, and then steers him towards the nearest window in the corridor outside the room.

"We're back home," he says. "Safe and sound. And, don't worry, the ship's currently invisible."

They're floating high above Withington, and far below, Jay can see the familiar shape of his house and its neat little garden.

"There's not enough room to land around here, so you'll have to fly the rest of the way," Felix says apologetically.

It's just a hop, skip and a jump away, Jay could be back there in seconds, but he finds himself reluctant to make a move, regardless. Reluctant to get back to his life of dispensing chemist by day, superhero by night, weekend, and the occasional bank holiday, as though this entire strange affair with Felix never happened.

For a superhero, it's nothing all that out of the ordinary, really, in comparison to the alien gladiatorial battles, world-eating monsters, and multi-dimensional catastrophes they deal with on the regular. Diamond Bane had once been trapped in an abandoned mineshaft with his archnemesis, Phantom Cat, for over a week, and it was an open secret in super- circles that they'd dated for almost a year afterwards. 

The status quo reasserted itself in the end, though; their relationship fell apart in a spectacularly messy fashion that flattened a couple of acres of woodland, and they'd fallen back into enmity easily enough. 

Jay's quiet, peaceful interlude with his own archnemesis will doubtless be forgotten just as quickly, and he'll be back to smashing up Felix's inventions, wrecking his labs, and destroying his research soon enough.

Their temporary truce was nice whilst it lasted, but it's time to get back to reality. 

"Well, thanks for not killing me when you had the chance, I guess," Jay says, holding his right hand out for Felix to shake.

Felix stares at it for a moment, and then slowly, haltingly removes the glove from his left hand.

It, too, looks perfectly human, the nails straight-cut short and the skin across his knuckles slightly chapped. Felix takes a deep breath, and then in a sudden, determined rush flips his hand over to reveal his palm and the gnarled scar which cuts across the centre of it.

"Of course I remember that day," Felix says, looking intently down at the scar. "I tried to forget… Well, a lot of things, really, but this was always here to remind me. Of you. I miss you, too, Jay."

Jay isn't happy to hear that, he can't be, never mind what the excited little skip of his heart might seem to suggest to the contrary. No matter how much they might miss each other, Jay's still a superhero and, more importantly, Felix is still a supervillain. And as long as he's still concocting nefarious plots, Jay is duty- and honour-bound to foil them, which will always keep them naturally at odds.

"And I've been thinking about what you said in the cave," Felix says. "About how we're maybe getting too old for this and I… I think you might be right. On my part, at least. Supervillainy's a young man's game, and I think it's about time I retire."

"Oh?" Jay says, cautiously hopeful.

"I don't want to waste any more of my life hiding out there on my own in the snow. Everything I've done, everything I've given up, didn't make anything better, and it didn't… I've never been able to bring Dad back."

Jay had never suspected that that was what he was trying to achieve with his experiments, but it makes sense of a lot of things, really. His repeated, increasingly disastrous attempts at time travel for one, and most likely the plague of zombie animals that rampaged through Manchester city centre a couple of years ago, for another.

"Dad wasn't a good man, he wasn't even a nice man, but he was the only family I had, so I felt I had to try. But it's enough now. Being with you, talking with you again made me realise that it's time – that I _want_ to hang up the costume and rejoin the world."

Jay has no idea how he managed to persuade Felix of that, but he doesn't want to push his luck by questioning him on the details of his decision and risk souring it in the process.

"You promise?" he asks, hesitant, because this sudden change of heart seems too good to be true. Something he's dreamt of for years, but never dared to imagine might happen in reality.

"I promise," Felix says, nodding firmly, and then he darts forward to press a kiss on Jay's cheek to seal it. It's light enough that Jay could pass it off as casual if he wanted to, but close enough to the corner of his lips that it could be interpreted as something more, if he was so inclined.

Jay's not like Diamond Bane, he couldn't look the other way and pretend his morals weren't being compromised if Felix is lying about his intention of giving up supervillainy.

But Felix's small, tentative, _kind_ smile is so achingly reminiscent of the man he used to be that Jay can't help but kiss him back.

Jay's kiss is brief but ardent, and a promise of his own in return for the one Felix had given him. A promise of what their future might hold if Felix really is telling the truth. 


End file.
